


Counterweight

by Jayne L (JayneL)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-06
Updated: 2013-11-06
Packaged: 2017-12-31 16:37:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1033920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JayneL/pseuds/Jayne%20L
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam <em>refuses</em>, and all at once, Ezekiel's gone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Counterweight

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to MaryKate for sharing reassurance and thinky thoughts.

Sam fought Lucifer to a standstill, and that was after having given him clear, conscious consent. Ezekiel tries to hold on--Sam feels him try, feels him swell and brace and scrabble for purchase; feels, at the last, flares of bitter resentment and desperate fear--but Sam _refuses_ , and all at once, he's gone. Sam slices open his palm the moment he's free, scrawls a banishing sigil and slams down his hand. Paints a lockout ward on the door of the bunker as the light fades.

Turns and finds Dean looking up from the bottom of the stairs, wide-eyed and tight-lipped and ashen.

* * *

Dean spent a day in the kitchen--a day Sam spent listening to the clatter and bang of pots and pans, the _thuck-thuck-thuck_ of a knife on the bunker's felled-tree chopping block, the occasional exasperated curse or contented burst of unselfconscious singing--and ended it at the head of the war room table, which was absolutely crowded with food.

Turkey and stuffing. Potatoes and gravy. Roasted turnip and carrots. Sweet potato casserole. Cherry pie and apple crumble. The turkey was a little dry, and the pie filling came from a can, but it was an actual Thanksgiving dinner, and it was homemade.

And there were leftovers. Enough to feed them all for a week, even after they'd stuffed themselves to lethargy. While Kevin scraped plates and filled the sink with suds, Sam stood helplessly in the middle of the kitchen with the turkey platter in one hand and the gravy pot in the other, trying to remember if they had plastic wrap that was intended for use on food and not bodies.

Dean sauntered in with the casserole dish and the same general air of smug satisfaction he'd had all through the meal. After one look at Sam's obvious bewilderment, he veered off to a corner of the counter, picked up a shopping bag and pulled out a brand new pack of Tupperware containers; held them up with a grin like he was brandishing the head of a kill.

* * *

"You were dying, Sam." There's something simple in the way Dean says it, like he genuinely sees no need for further explanation. Something flat, too, like he's practised this conversation in his head to the point of rote recitation. Something resigned. "You'd quit the trial, but you were still dying. Practically braindead already. It was gonna be for nothing, and I--"

"Couldn't let me die like that?"

"I couldn't let you die, period!" There's the emotion, the outburst. The--Sam wants to label it exasperation, maybe, weirdly, Dean's hands cutting sharply through the air. His eyes cutting to all the room's exits before returning to Sam, a hunted look on his face. "Didn't you hear what I said in that church? I put you before everything else, Sam! Everything!"

* * *

"Mail call," Dean announced, back from a supply run to town. He dropped a stack of mostly fliers and junk on the table next to Sam's elbow as he passed, keeping the giant parcel tucked awkwardly under his arm for himself.

Sam eyed the box: it was easily five feet long and a foot across, maybe six inches deep. "Dude, that better not be from that sex toy site you found researching Elder Gods."

"Shut up, Sammy," Dean retorted cheerfully, continuing on down the hall to his bedroom without even glancing back, and Sam spent the rest of the day in unwilling and horrified fascination, because what if it _was_?

When he poked his head into Dean's room later to say goodnight, he was more relieved than he'd ever let on to have the mystery solved: there was a new sword on proud display on Dean's wall. A wooden sword, with the Moondoor crest on its blocky hilt and less killing power than a flyswatter.

Sitting in his chair at his desk, Dean looked from Sam to the sword, then back down at the yellowing pages of the paperback he'd been reading. "It's from Charlie," was all he said, gruffly.

Sam noted the faint tinge of colour seeping up the back of Dean's neck. He looked again at the sword, hanging right alongside Dean's guns and knives and that brutal monster-bone machete he'd brought back from Purgatory. "Wow, Dean," he said, something welling up in his chest that felt a lot like glee, "you're a _giant nerd_."

He ducked back out the door, laughing, before Dean's flying book could hit him in the face.

* * *

"I am crap at letting you go, Sam." Sam's mouth twists scornfully because _yeah, Dean, kinda figured that out a while ago_ , but Dean stands his ground. "Always have been. I used the first good excuse I got to pull you outta Stanford. When you got stabbed--when you died that first time--I brought you back because I couldn't face outliving you. I spent a year with Lisa and Ben having tee-off times and barbecues and family fuckin' game nights, and every night, I went to sleep with a loaded gun under my bed and guilt stewin' in my gut. And the second, the _second_ I knew you were alive and kicking--that was it. Me and Lisa and Ben, we were over. You, you were friggin' soulless, you could've taken or left me and not given a shit either way, but I was gone because you were there and _I couldn't let you go_. You fucked it up, Sam, you and my pathetic, white-knuckle grip on you--"

Sam shoves him. Doesn't even feel the slam of his palms on Dean's chest until Dean's on the floor, breathless and shocked, sprawled in a starburst of shards from a lamp he'd knocked off the end table on his way down.

"Don't." Sam bites out. "Don't you _dare_."

He leaves Dean there, in the middle of the broken glass, blood from Sam's palm smeared on his shirt and high colour staining his sick-pale face.

It's not until hours later, when Sam's alone in his room with his door locked and his duffle half-packed, that he realises what Dean said.

* * *

Sam intended to argue.

Cas looked small and hollowed-out, standing motionless in the cavern of the bunker with his gaze fixed on the floor and his hands limp at his sides. Dean, who'd watched Cas in the rearview mirror almost as much as he'd watched the road the whole drive back, couldn't seem to spare him so much as a glance now, and had his jaw clenched like he'd swallowed something ugly, and wasn't even putting up a token protest against the idea that Cas should leave. Sam intended to argue, because they'd aired out a bedroom explicitly _for Cas_ , what the _hell_ \--but even as he opened his mouth, the thought occurred: _The decision is made. Let it lie._

Sam didn't argue.

Cas had been gone two days when Sam looked up from his laptop and found Dean zoned out in an armchair, slumped and staring off down the bedroom hallway. Staring at the door to the room across from his own, empty and closed up two days running.

Until he remembered himself, and darted his gaze to Sam, then away.

* * *

Sam says, "I'm not leaving."

Clearly, Dean didn't hear him come into the kitchen: his head jerks up and his spine straightens and his hand spasms around his mug, which sloshes some coffee over the rim and onto his fingers. It must be cold, because Dean doesn't react at all to the spill; looking at the purple shadows under his eyes, Sam thinks he must've been sitting there a long time. Must've spent the night as sleeplessly as Sam did.

Must've, because out in the war room, the broken lamp's been cleaned up, and Sam's blood sigils have been scrubbed away, the lockout ward on the door replaced with a painstakingly neat painted version. And here in the kitchen, the coffee pot is empty, and Dean's full cup is cold.

"What you did to me--" Sam shakes his head to counter the slow tightening of his shoulders, the old ache in his jaw. "I won't ever trust you again. And I don't think I can forgive you." Dean sags in his chair. He doesn't look surprised. "But you knew I wouldn't, right? You had to know, when you helped Ezekiel get my yes." Still no surprise; Dean just looks resigned, again. It's answer enough. "I'm not leaving, Dean."

Dean startles, just a little. _There's the surprise,_ Sam thinks, and his satisfaction at being right is a barren thing.

In an exhausted croak, Dean asks, "Why the hell not?"

"Because I can't figure out any other way to make you understand that it doesn't always have to be either/or," Sam says. "Me, or anything else you want in your life. Anyone else. Because if I stay, maybe you'll start to figure out that it's okay to want more than one thing." He sees the moment Dean gets it, the quake of understanding that rounds his eyes. The short, ragged breath he takes, like he needs the air to smother something inside him. "Dean. You're allowed to have more than just me."

For the first time since the truth came out, Sam thinks, Dean looks afraid.


End file.
